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Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to A small, weird and unpractical programming language

I've been spending some time coding fp. It is a programming language heavily inspired by the language John Backus described in his 1977 Turing Award lecture. There's plenty of examples in the projects github repository for the interested!

fp is a programming language designed for developers interested in functional programming concepts. Inspired by John Backus's 1977 Turing Award lecture, it explores an unconventional approach to code structure and… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. A small, weird and unpractical programming language launched in 2022; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1

    Hi friends, I started casually working on scrapscript in 2015. I built a few compilers over the years to test out various ideas/implementations, and I think I'm finally happy with the overall design. The code is not public yet. Email me at [email protected] if you're interested in joining the core team later this year. Let me know if you have any questions or feedback :)

    2023 · scrapscript.org · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    I'm fascinated by the generative AI wave rolling over us, and wondered if AI could create a language that it might prefer using over the ones created by and for humans. To create the design, I had AI analyze the ASTs of several mainstream languages plus a few of the conceptually groundbreaking but esoteric ones (listed in the README) and then create a new structure and new syntax. It was named after the Jacquard machine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_machine), a precursor to Babbage's Analytical Engine (and punch cards). The result reused a lot of existing ideas…

    Jul 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    An experimental language which adds functional programming features to Go. - albrow/fo

    2018 · github.com · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    A puzzle game inspired by functional programming.

    2015 · david-peter.de · its alternatives →

  5. 5CV
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    A minimal viable programming language on top of liblgpp - codr7/alang

    2021 · github.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7AE

    easyprog.online ist Ihre erste und beste Informationsquelle über easyprog. Hier finden Sie auch weitere interessante Links. Wir hoffen, dass Sie bei Ihrer Suche erfolgreich sind!

    2019 · easyprog.online · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    A fast functional language based on two level type theory - ehatti/peridot

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9ID
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    Modern low-level programming language. Contribute to nickmqb/muon development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2019 · github.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11IW

    The book page links to a blog post that explains how I got about it (and has a link to sample content), but the TL&DR is that I could not find a lot of books that were on "our" history _and_ were larded with technical details. So I set about writing one, and some five years later I'm happy to share the result. I think it's one of the few "computer history" books that has tons of code, but correct me if I'm wrong (I wrote this both to tell a story and to learn :-)). My favorite languages are Smalltalk and Lisp, but as an Emacs user, I've been using the latter for much longer and for my…

    Feb 2026 · berksoft.ca · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    Functional programming for modern Fortran. Contribute to wavebitscientific/functional-fortran development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2016 · github.com · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    A minimalist type-inferred programming language with procedural macro support - murisi/L2

    2017 · github.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    This is a hobby project of mine that I started a few years ago to learn about programming language implementation. It was created 95% without AI, although a few recent commits include code from Gemini CLI. I started out following Crafting Interpreters, but gradually branched off that until I had almost nothing left in common. Tech stack: Rust, Cranelift (JIT compilation), LALRPOP (parser). Original title: "A small programming language where everything is a value" (edited based on comments)

    Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    C# pure functional programming framework - come and get declarative! - louthy/language-ext

    2014 · github.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16IC

    AntiLang is an interpreted programming language written in Go. The basic idea of this is to keep all the logical parts of a language same, but reverse the structure of it. The idea for this project came when I was having a long midnight conversation with my friend and thought of writing such a weird language. The initial draft was far worse than the current implementation; we thought of reversing the brackets and the language would be read from bottom to top. I'm happy that I dropped that idea Technical details: As the interpreter is written in Golang, I compiled it to WASM, and the whole…

    2025 · siruscodes.github.io · its alternatives →

  17. 17MW
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    Matt Mueller's personal website for sharing what I've learned about programming, design, entrepreneurship and life.

    2017 · mat.tm · its alternatives →

  19. 19

    Hey! I’m JC. I’m 17 and part of Hack Club, a nonprofit where we help teenagers ship programming projects with their friends while growing technically. A while ago, I asked myself the question, “How exactly do programming languages work behind the scenes?” It seemed really daunting until I went to a half hour workshop at a high school hackathon about writing a tree-walk interpreter and realized that getting started was actually super fun. This guide is designed in the vein of that - to get people, especially teenagers, started on learning how to build a programming language in a literal…

    2024 · easel.hackclub.com · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    A lisp dialect based on pattern matching and term rewriting - abuseofnotation/termlisp

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  21. 21IM

    just a wack systems dude tbh

    2018 · h313.info · its alternatives →

  22. 22SA

    Hi HN! Silk is a project I began working on approximately six months ago without any prior experience or knowledge of compiler design, and it's been a frustrating but fun learning experience. It is very much a work in progress, but I would love to hear feedback of any kind!

    2020 · ajaymt.github.io · its alternatives →

  23. 23IB
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